The First Good Bye - Sasebo!

Tuesday, September 21st was my last day of work at the Naval base in Sasebo. Sasebo also holds the honor of being the first and last place I did my briefings. I was actually talking to one of my sailors yesterday and I commented how he sat in on my first briefing and he said "O really, I couldn't tell." O yeah, he has sat through a bunch of these briefings. I will miss Sasebo and these are the things I will miss.

• Command PT in cadence - yes, in a weird twisted way I will miss being woken up before my alarm by sailors running and chanting that they are better then the Air Force.


• Mongolian BBQ - O it took me basically half the summer to finally go to Mongolian BBQ on base and boy am I sorry it took me forever, I <3>
  
• Outside the Gates - Sasebo is different then Iwakuni because once you walk outside the gates of the base you can walk into town and go to the stores, restaurants, and Starbucks. It is nice because you can just go off base and walk around, there isn't much to do outside the gates of Iwakuni.


• Starbucks - O come on, are you surprised! My last day there my barristta knew my order, good sign or bad sign you decide! However, I loved Starbucks because it was something to do off base and a great place to people watch. I didn't have an exciting nite life here so it was a great way to kill some times and experience the culture. I loved watching the young Japanese girls and the sailors together, o the laughs ahha.

• Bishnus - O Fantastic Indian!!! A weird but cool thing about Indian in Japan is they love Nan Bread and you can get it like 12 different ways, and it is huge and everyone order there own. There is regular nan, sesame nan, cheese nan, garlic nan (you get the point).

• The people -my coworkers were great. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the military wives I worked with, as well, as Phil who is a retired chief and is in charge of those sailors who are deployed without their units (he is also in charge of the intermural sport leagues for the sailors), Eriko, and Kaori. I loved learning about them and hearing their stories. Everyone had a different life story and it was interesting to see all of these people brought together.

• Billy - he was in charge of TAP for Sasebo and honestly, he rocks. He was in the military for 24 years and has been working as a civilian for over 5 years on base. He has 2 older children who live in the US and then three younger kids (who are Japanese American). His son used to come into work and is a funny but sweet kid; he just transferred to the American school. Billy is a workaholic who cannot say no to people and is so full of life. He cares so much about his sailors and helping people that sometimes he sacrifices himself; I had to remind him to grab lunch and physically dragged him out of the office once to get it. I am truly impressed by Billy; he is scattered brained and I know how that is but also has a heart of gold. Billy also has cannabalistic fish; I do not have a picture of them because I am truly scared of them. One looks like an aligator and Billy put it in a tank with a beta fish; the fighting fish was no match for this thing and was killed. So what did Billy do he bought more fish; a total of 4 aligator fish, 3 of these black and blue fish that swim sideways and all different versions, and a few others. By the time I left those aligator fish killed 14 fish and 2 snails!! One time they had one of the black fish in its mouth - O I screamed and freaked out like a little girl. Kaori rescued a few of them and put them in her tank.
  
  
  

I will NOT miss the weather; ugh it rains all the time there and more than once I walked into work looking like a drowned rat! This week I had to be taken home because you could wring out my skirt.

Good Bye Sasebo and thank you for the memories and an enjoyable 4 1/2 months!